


Short Things

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2020-07-29 02:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20074624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: Assorted ficlets that don't really fit in anywhere else.





	1. 1 - Age

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "age."

Halfway through lunch, Behrad gets a strange look on his face. Nate does a quick check of the pasta that they’d made using one of Ava’s recipes, but doesn’t find anything strange about it. Ava glares at him from the other half of the makeshift table and spears the next piece of pasta much harder than necessary.

“What’s wrong?” Nate asks as he pushes the dish towards Mick so that he can take a second serving without nearly elbowing someone in the face again. Camaraderie is great and all, but Nate’s beginning to regret pushing the tables in the galley into a nest. Mona’s already managed to stab Nora with a fork when she got too enthusiastic in the middle of a story.

“Today’s my birthday.”

Ray’s expression morphs into one of mingled regret and horror as he fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his phone. “I don’t have a note of it. I’m so sorry! I would have got Gideon to make a cake if I’d known.”

“No, I mean— Based on when were at Heyworld, six weeks ago, this is my birthday. I was born three hours ago today.”

“So you’re three hours old?” Charlie snorts, leaning across to try to steal a piece of pasta from Mick’s plate. He warns her away with the business end of his fork. “Come on, the tray’s too far away!”

Mick hands the tray over and says, “New team members keep getting younger.”

“I’m hundreds of years old!”

“You’re a shapeshifter, you don’t count. At this rate we’re going to end up with teenagers.”

“I mean, technically…” Nora raises her hand with an embarrassed expression and points to herself. “My teenage self is in the same year that Behrad was just born in.”

Mick groans. “I hate time travel. Who the fuck even knows how old anyone is now?”

“Do I count the time I spent dead? Wait, do we only count years that we’ve actually lived for? How old does that make Ava?”

Ava cringes. “I’m in my thirties, that’s all we’re going to think about.”

Mick points his fork at each team member in turn. “Old shapeshifter—”

“Hey!”

“—Baby and adult. Teenager and adult. Clone. Dead for a while and then stranded back in time for a couple of years. Also stranded back in time for a couple of years.” He points to himself. “Lived in a timeless place for a long time.”

Nate looks between himself and Mona. “Wait, are we the only ones who are only one age in the present _and_ know for sure how old we technically are?”

“That depends: do I count how old Wolfie is? Because I think she might be a kaupe spirit passed on to me from Konane, which would make her much older than I am.”

Suddenly Nate really misses Jax.


	2. "Are you drunk?" (steelwave)

“Are you drunk?” Mick asked as he dropped the sunhat on Nate’s head. It wasn’t really a question. There were a lot of empty glasses on the table beside Nate’s sun lounger.

Nate swiped it away and squinted up at him. The tip of his nose was sunburned, his hair had been bleached a shade or two lighter by the sun over the last few weeks, and there was definitely too much tanned skin on show for Nate to be sober. It made standing over him in the midday sun feel awkward, but Nate didn’t seem to notice.

“Not right now, those are from yesterday. Come on, going swimming tonight is a great idea.” Nate winced as he sat up properly to pull the umbrella closer until he was actually in the shade. “I think I burned my back yesterday.”

“You did.” She’d thrown a bucket of seawater over him to do it. Even if Mick hadn’t known that Nate had managed to get himself sunburned, the yelping when he’d woken up (or regained consciousness; Mick hadn’t been convinced that he’d just been sleeping and not blackout drunk at the time) would have told him. “I’m not going swimming at night.”

Zari had taken refuge in the shade, citing a dislike of staying out when it was too hot. Wally and Ray were at a nearby hotel, probably enjoying the air conditioning. Sara had sneaked off somewhere, still dressed for the beach – probably to spend time with Ava. Which had left Mick on “watch Nate and make sure he doesn’t do something stupid like drown himself in the sea” duty as Zari and Wally called it. It wasn’t a bad job. It mainly involved a lot of sitting around and not a lot else. The perfect job for him, if Mick was honest, because it gave him plenty of time to plan out his next book.

Nate smirked. “But if we go swimming during the day then we have to wear clothes.”

Oh, definitely not. Mick wasn’t going skinny dipping with Nate. It was bad enough having Nate sprawling around on the beach in only shorts.

“Do you want under my umbrella?” Nate asked as he took a couple of bottles of beer from one of Gideon high tech coolers and handed one to Mick. He crossed his legs so that Mick could squeeze on to the lounger and into the shade.

Up close, Mick could smell Nate’s stupid coconut shampoo and the sun cream he’d plastered himself in today. The stupid beer was something summery as well. It wasn’t entirely disgusting, he admitted as he took a drink, watching Nate down half of his bottle in one go and wipe his mouth on the back of his hand.

“I’ll get you in the water eventually,” Nate promised. He picked up the sunhat and put it on far too carefully. The action didn’t go unnoticed by some idiot frat boy who was walking past and slowed down way too much to give Nate a once over.

Mick resisted the urge to knock the damn hat right off again.


	3. steelwave - stolen kiss

“You know, before I joined the Legends, I’d never even been in a real fight before, let alone a bar fight,” Nate laughs. Several streets behind them, the fight is still going on. Nate can hear sirens approaching, but they’re too far away for him to care. Or maybe that’s the alcohol. Nate’s not sure anymore. “This is the third one I’ve been in this year.”

“I’d been in seven before I was even old enough to legally be in a bar.”

“Hmm.” Nate spins around so that he’s walking backwards, right in front of Mick. It’s dangerous on the cobbles, even sober, but it gives him the perfect opportunity to stop for a few seconds, just long enough for Mick to get close enough that Nate can kiss him quickly before he starts walking again. He doesn’t give Mick a chance to say anything before he keeps talking. “Hey, do you think Sara’s going to lecture us when we get back? We did kind of ruin the mission.”


	4. steelwave - an abandoned or empty space

“There’s nothing here,” Mick said quietly as he sat down on the low wall that ran along the front of one of the yards. Stupid. He had been so stupid. His memories had been the same, right down to the last details. He had _known_ that nothing had changed, but some part of him had wanted to believe that time just hadn’t caught up with his memories, that _something_ would be different, he just had to look. He looked up at Nate, who was looking at him rather than their surroundings. “I didn’t change anything.”

Mick had wanted to believe that he’d managed to change something. That maybe his mom had survived. That maybe his old man had become a better person instead of a worse one. That just one little thing was different. That what had happened in Vietnam had achieved something.

But the house was still a boarded up, burned out shell, surrounded by a fence covered with warning signs and a notice that it was to be demolished in a few weeks. And Mick knew that if he got Gideon to look up the records that the damage was still old, that the house had still stood empty since he had started the fire. Since his parents had died in it.

Nate’s hand on his shoulder was tentative, as if he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch him. Mick leaned into the touch without really thinking about it.

“I’m sorry. It’s not your fault, though. He made his choices, just like you’ve made yours, and whatever he chose after Vietnam, whoever he became… You _couldn’t_ have changed anything.”

And, yes, Mick had made his choices. He’d chosen the Legends, time and time again. He’d chosen to lower his gun when all he’d wanted was to choose to make his old man pay for everything. He’d even chosen this, letting Nate come along to the remains of his old house.

“I know, but I really wanted it to work this time, Pretty.”


	5. Zari Tomaz - a day to herself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote this a long time ago, but I totally forgot to post it.

The day starts off perfectly. For the first time in a long time, Zari can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She can play whatever she wants without anyone distracting her, cook whatever she wants without someone telling her to just get Gideon to make it because it’s faster or easier. 

Zari steals the latest draft of Mick’s novel and takes Nate’s usual spot in the library, reads with her feet on the desk and relays her favourite parts to Gideon. She pokes around in the ‘secret’ parts of the lab because Ray isn’t there to tell her not to (he has some weird hobbies; also, she’s pretty sure he’s secretly in contact with Nora Darhk.) She gets Gideon to make her some paint, and decorates one of the walls on her room, gets paint all over the floors of the ship when she accidentally knocks it over and has to spend an hour cleaning it up (sunshine yellow, smudging on the walls, too.) She plays Guitar Hero with the volume turned up as high as it will go, ordering Gideon to make sure it’s playing everywhere on the ship.

(And if she dances, well, Wally isn’t there to see it.)

And it’s fun, it really is. 

But she still has to be careful not to smile when she hears the first members of the team returning.


	6. Team - cooking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another old ficlet that I forgot to post.

Mick had watched him follow the recipes, so he knew that nothing had gone wrong there. And Gideon’s fabricated food was always perfect (except the sugar free stuff), so nothing that he’d _used_ could have had anything wrong with it.

But somehow the bread was solid, despite Mick having watched Nate soaking in some kind of garlic hellpaste for an hour; the chicken was tasteless despite the sauce being hot enough that Ray had downed several glasses of water; the salad was limp enough that even Sara had raised an eyebrow at it; the soup was somehow both watery and too thick, depending on which spoonful you were on.

“Well?” Nate asked hopefully.

“It’s–” Mick began.

“Great!” Wally said loudly, his plate and his bowl already completely empty. “Is there any left.” At everyone’s confused looks that they shot as soon as Nate turned away, he shrugged and whispered, “He looked so happy, I couldn’t upset him; I’ll eat everyone’s if you don’t tell him that superspeed is required to eat this so that you don’t have to taste it, or feel it in any way.”

Zari speared a sad looking tomato with her fork before leaning over until that only Mick could hear her over the sound of Nate plating up some more of the barely edible food.

“You’re teaching me how you rig Ray’s chore wheel, and we’re making sure that Nate only cooks if Wally’s here.”


	7. Nate and Charlie - cheer up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie needs to get Nate out of this funk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, did anyone watch the scene with Charlie and Nate escorting the sexy firefighter out and not think they were gonna have a threesome with him?

Halfway through a bottle of whisky and a quarter of the way watching a very drunk Mick trying to teach a very stoned Behrad how to play darts, Charlie decides that she’s really got to get Nate out of his funk.

A dart misses the board, bounces off the glass, and lands next to Nate’s foot. Nate doesn’t even look up from his glass. Mick and Behrad don’t seem to realise that they’re a dart down. Great. So much for them helping.

It makes sense that Nate’s the last one to get out of his funk. When Nate had left for the Time Bureau, Ray had moped for days as well. Hell, Ray had moped for days after Nate had died and come back to life. Charlie’s used to Ray moping. She is _not_ used to Nate moping, let alone for more than a day.

“You know,” Charlie says, grabbing Nate’s arm and brandishing a slip of paper in front of his face like bait, “that sexy fire fighter left us his number. We could give him a call tomorrow.”

_Us_ specifically. He’d also left a few suggestions of what he wanted to do with them when he wasn’t being paid for his time, but Charlie wasn’t going to tell Nate that unless she was sure he was going to bite.

“Are you trying to cheer me up with a threesome?” Nate asks. Then winces as Behrad makes an even worse shot and the ricocheting dart narrowly misses Nate’s head. He carefully scoots to the left, closer to Charlie, until Behrad’s couch is mostly blocking any possible flying objects from Behrad and Mick’s direction.

“Is it working?”

“More than it should,” Nate says, his expression brightening. Not by a lot, but it’s a big improvement over the sad kitten look he’s been wearing for the last week.

They both ignore the sound of shattering glass behind them, and Gideon’s loud admonishment that she had _warned you both to avoid practicing in front of that section of glass when they made a dartboard._ Mick and Behrad can clean it up.

“Great,” Charlie. “Because I have ideas. I just need to know what your stamina is like and how flexible you are.”


	8. steelgreen - pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate gives Gary a gift.

Ten days after Gary got him, and five days after Gary Junior Two narrowly survives trying to chew through one of the Waverider’s cables, Nate shows up on the Waverider with a box. Gary, who’s still trying and failing to teach Junior Two the difference between green food and blue wires (“lettuce good for rabbits, tasty; wired bad for rabbits, shocky”), barely notices it until Junior Two decides that he wants to know what’s in it, and hops over to sniff at the crate.

“Is that more stuff from your parents’ house?” Maybe Nate’s mom has a cat or a dog. Gary’s never thought to ask whenever he’s seen Nate bringing things from his mom’s place aboard the ship.

“Oh, no, this is actually something for you. Well, sort of for the team, but more for you than anyone else, because I think you’re one of the only people who’d take care of her.”

_Her_ is a sleepy looking King Charles Spaniel who peers out of the top of the box like she already owns the ship and doesn’t find it very impressive. When Nate plonks her down on the ground, she only walks a few feet before she sits down to let Junior Two sniff at her.

“Her name’s Sammy. One of my mom’s friends rescued her a few months ago, but she doesn’t have time for her _and_ twenty rabbits – don’t ask – so when my mom mentioned that she was looking for a new home, I thought about the ship,” Nate says as Gary crouches down to hold his hand out for Sammy to sniff at. “I okayed it with Sara first.”

“She’s ship broken?”

“More than that, she comes over and sits on your left foot when she needs to go for a walk. She’s good with rabbits, she’s great with kids, the only thing Helen didn’t like was that she’s too lazy to go for long walks, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem on the ship. I mean, you’re not going to take her for a walk in Victorian London, are you? And I know your place doesn’t allow large dogs.”

Gary scratches Sammy between her ears, grinning as her tail thuds against the metal floor. He scoops her up easily – she’s heavier than she looks – and lets her settle against his chest. Junior Two’s lost interest and has gone back to chewing on a piece of lettuce. “You got me a present.”

Nate coughs, not even trying to hide his smile. “Yeah, just don’t tell anyone. I don’t want Sara to find out the dog isn’t really part hers.”


	9. steelwave - "Detention? Again?"

Mick’s halfway down the hallway when Nate catches up with him. Nate’s what happens when rich people move two weeks after school starts up again and decide they want their kid to be bullied at a public school instead of a private one. Not even the nerds want to be seen hanging out with the weird kid who doesn’t get asked for a note to get him out of gym. Nate doesn’t as much fit in with Mick and his few friends as he’s ended up with them by default.

Against his better judgement, Mick likes him. Probably more than he should.

“Detention? Again? You know you could just go to class, right?” Nate says, tucking a textbook into his backpack as he walks. He’d probably done his homework while he was waiting for Mick.

Mick shrugs. He could go to class. He could also keep cutting class. It doesn’t make much of a difference to him. It’s not like he’s planning on going to college like Nate is. It’s not like anyone expects him to do anything other than cut class. It’s easy. Except when Nate shows up to bug him about it, which happens most of the time.

“Why are you still here anyway, Pretty? Don’t you have horse riding or some shit to go to?”

Nate rolls his eyes. “Dressage. And it’s on Fridays, not Thursdays. My mom’s making pizza with my grandma’s recipe tonight, and I thought you might want to come over. You like her pizza.”

He _does_ like her pizza. And that’s a good enough excuse for Mick to let Nate grab his sleeve and steer him towards the bus stop as soon as they’re outside, talking about how if they hurry, they’ll get the next bus and get there in time to help her with the dough.


End file.
